I’m a huge fan of the Volca Drum, but the fiddly workflow kills some of the fun for me.
I kind of see the Erica Synths LXR-02 as being a grown up version of the Volca Drum. Both utilize digital synthesis for creating drum sounds, and the sonic palette is fairly similar. The LXR-02 is more wide open in its sound design possibilities, to the point where it can get a little tedious. Both have a super fun secret weapon: The Volca has the random patch generator and the LXR has kit morph. God, kit morph is so freaking cool. I wish other companies would add this feature.
Anyway, both great drum machines. We live in great times!
Slept on it and Drum has still been a Syntakt killer for me. I’m listing it, and have ordered a keylab to control my V Collection properly. I’m not massively financially plush ATM, so getting £300 back and more hands on access to prophets, Junos and the rest is a solid choice I think.
I’m a bit puzzled that, so far, Korg didn’t put the potential they have here in a bigger box. It’s a really diverse and deep synth, unbeatable for the money, but in a toyish enclosure. I played this liveset with it yesterday and it’s a lot of fun. Octatrack just lurking, looping and FXing…
I thought he means the Electribe 2 (synth version). I looked into it a bit and, so far, I’m missing two things there that I use quite a bit on the Volca: Waveshaping and the dual layers for the parts. Of course, the Electribe 2 has way more parts to spare so there goes layering, but couldn’t find information on waveshaping for now. Also, I did FM via sinewave modulation in a lot of the sounds, not sure how well the E2 handles that.
The synthesis on the E2 and Volca Drum are not the same. They’re both great, but quite different. There is no bigger hardware equivalent to the Vocal Drum yet. Here’s hoping Korg make one!
……in a Drumlogue form factor. They do different engined synths in the same form factors with the Volcas and other synths in their line up, so I’m fairly sure this will happen with the Drumlogue too. It makes so much sense to wring out as much sales as possibl without developing completely new hardware.
anyone used a VST-type editor for the Volca Drum that worked well? bonus points if it’s budget friendly :3
love this little drum machine but for nailing sound design i’d love to be able to just enter values and tweak the sounds on my laptop then focus on performing with the physical machine afterwards for sampling purposes
I have 2 volca drums. I like using one for drums/percs and another for non-drum sounds, making use of the pitch quantize option for basses, melodies and noises. The biggest limitation for me is the stereo out - you can pan the parts left and right and process them differently but the wave guide (and the other master parameters like drive iirc) come through on both left and right whether you pan the parts or not.
I had a little jam earlier today using my Zaquencer in drum mode to sequence one volca drum and that was fun! Not tried the drum mode on it before.
But anyway - editors for volca drum.
I’ve enjoyed this vst one via Ableton - a bit tricky to setup the midi routing etc but works once you’ve done it.
And if you have an iPad there is a great template for the volca drum available for MidiDesigner.
There’s no way to dump patches off the drum though… No midi out.
While they may have different architectures, the E2 can absolutely achieve all the same sounds as the Volca Drum (and all the other Volcas for that matter). The value of the Volca series is not in the sounds they make, per se, but rather in how those sounds are achieved. Korg simply recognized the value of distilling certain esoteric aesthetics into smaller boxes, wherein the laymen effectively couldn’t miss for trying.
This is true of every purpose-built synth or drum machine on the market: i.e. boxes with fixed parameters are meant to guide the user into arriving at specific sounds that they might not otherwise know how to make, and keep them within a certain paradigm. The timbres the Volca Drum produces are unique and complex, particularly if you were looking to synthesize them from scratch.
To that end, the E2 has all the facilities you need to arrive at all the same sounds as the Volca Drum; but you will need to know, ahead of time, what you’re going for and how to make it happen.
The E2 provides wave-folding, pseudo-FM, and other wave-shaping facilities via the parameter simply labelled “edit”. This parameter performs a different function for every oscillator, depending on the focus of that oscillator. There are also further useful tone-shaping FX and audio-rate modulations (like Ring Mod) available in the IFX section, per sound.
Korg has always been clever this way: i.e. seemingly so few parameters, at a glance, yet an elusively deep and capable synth engine when taken to task.
The E2’s flexibility lies in the multitude of oscillators and FX that you are provided with. It gets away with having just one oscillator, a single filter, one-and-a-half envelopes, and a single LFO, because it has hundreds of oscillators (and samples) to choose from, covering every conceivable timbre, as a starting point—complex timbres, that would otherwise require multiple oscillators, more modulation, and vast routing capabilities, outside the scope of basic subtractive synthesis.
Having owned both, I don’t remember anything in the E2 resembling the waveguide resonator in the volca drum. They couldn’t be more different imho but I’m happy to be proven wrong.
The debate is not whether or not they’re “different”. That much is obvious. I’m simply pointing out that the same sounds can be produced on either box.
Again, the value of the Volca Drum may well be the “Waveguide Resonator”; if only because it can lead to sounds that you might not otherwise think to shoot for. And that’s not trivial, to be sure.
However, once that sound exists, in so far as there is now a clear sonic objective, I assure you the E2 can then reproduce it, albeit in different way.
Don’t make me GAS 
